


Thirty-Six

by Chatvert



Series: To Rule Them All [1]
Category: Iron Man: Armored Adventures
Genre: Dumb Boy Emotions, Dumb teenagers being dumb, Idiots in Love, M/M, or at least an unhealthy codependent twisted facsimile of a sham of a fax of love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chatvert/pseuds/Chatvert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the next Mandarin and the last Khan, Temujin was taught strategy and deception from a young age. As he rises to claim his birthright, he uses that knowledge to get what he wants, and who he wants. There is absolutely no way this could ever possibly backfire. Right? (Spoilers starting from s1e13, "Hide and Seek")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. x. a knife behind a smile

**Greenland. Glacier. Courage Temple.**  
 **Six months before it all goes wrong.**

> _And now I need to know is this real love,_  
>  _Or is it just madness keeping us afloat?_  
>  _And when I look back at all the crazy fights we had,_  
>  _Like some kind of madness was taking control, yeah..._
> 
> _\- Muse, "Madness"_

Sliding down the glacier had been fun, for all that it had been reckless and very nearly deadly. The map they’d deciphered had been correct, though; if it hadn’t, and Gene had been dangling off an icy precipice at the mercy of Tony Stark for no reason, he would be quite angry to say the least.

Thankfully, the hunch, and the hard work, had paid off. Sometimes, Gene thought, it was better to be lucky than good. Being both had its perks, though.

There had been a moment of worry when the path to the temple had begun to retract, but he and Tony had sprinted and leapt to cover the gap, legs still burning from the earlier effort to make it down the glacier. The door had slammed down behind them, effectively trapping the pair unless they fancied lifting it open and falling down the frozen chasm below.

The exhilaration of all of the constant movement and from making it into the temple by the skin of their teeth caused the two of them to break down into helpless laughter. The danger, the burst of adrenaline – whatever it was, they thought that it was hysterical. And even though the laughter made his stomach hurt and half-frozen tears prick at the corners of his eyes, Gene liked it. It wasn’t often that he actually got to enjoy himself. So much of his time was spent scheming and obsessing and dealing with Tong operations that he’d become a grim young man. Laughter was, after all that, a relief, especially laughter about something stupid.

That didn’t mean that he still wasn’t plotting and scheming.

Through the bruises, cold-chapped skin, and stone-scraped palms, despite the fact that neither of them were at their best right now (and maybe because of it), Gene had been subtly working on Tony’s emotions since they’d arrived on the glacier. The wink upon finding the temple under the ice had been a nice touch, he thought; it had sent a foolish grin racing up Stark’s face and a rush of blood to his cheeks that couldn’t all be attributed to the cold.

Stark’s little crush had been painfully obvious since Gene had enrolled at the Tomorrow Academy. Because he was an asset in the search for the Makluan Rings, Gene had used that particular weakness to great effect, quietly encouraging it whenever Stark was away from his posse – which wasn’t often. This whole impromptu trip to the glacier had been excused by Tony saying that only a two-passenger helicopter was available. Gene had smiled, nodded, and grabbed a parka while mentally telling himself that was utter bullshit and that the heir to Stark International could summon a whole fleet of helicopters just by snapping his fingers. But he pretended to believe the lie. It suited his purposes.

He’d have to be aloof for a few days following this jaunt to keep Stark on the leash; he could excuse it by saying that Zhang needed him to research the provenance of some obscure artifact. Tony knew all too well the whims and vagaries of rich and eccentric single parents, and he’d let the matter lie, no questions asked. In the meantime, while they were still laughing about nothing, he kept his hand on top of Tony’s for a few seconds longer than was strictly socially acceptable, pretending not to notice the fact that he had done so or the fact that Tony’s breathing had, for a second, stopped.

Good.

“Come on,” he said, standing up, and Tony got to his feet behind him. “Let’s go check out the test.”

*

Ten minutes later, Gene was severely tempted to hit Tony around the head with one of the dozens of weapons scattered around the testing hall because he wasn’t _listening_. He just walked up and took the ring without activating the test – and without activating the test, as Gene had repeatedly tried to explain, the ring was nothing more than a historical artifact. He tried to appeal to Tony’s sense of scientific curiosity, but for some reason, he had decided to play it safe today, preferring to study the inactive ring.

If looks could kill, Tony Stark would have been a frozen corpse the minute he’d grabbed the ring.

There was a little bit of silence after he took the ring out of its glowing pedestal. It all felt somewhat anticlimactic, after all that effort, to just walk in and take it. He mentioned as much as Tony tossed the ring up and down.

“I know, right?” the teen genius said, chuckling and swiping the ring out of thin air again. “If we keep on going like this, skipping the tests, we’ll have all the rings in no time.”

Gene suppressed an exasperated scream by turning it into a series of fake coughs, and took a second to compose himself. When he was sure that he could talk without yelling, he turned back to Stark. “Your father was looking for a way to activate the rings,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, we should do it properly. Not just collecting them.”

A low blow, and he knew it – oh, did he ever know it, considering that Howard Stark was something of a long-term guest in the Mandarin’s household, a bit of trivia which Tony was not privy to.

Tony seemed to deflate. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, “but first I want to look at this one before it’s activated. See if I can get a baseline or something and see how that changes. Maybe that’ll help us find the other two more easily.” He paused. “Anyway, to do that, we have to find a way back out of here and up to the helicopter.”

“Maybe the bridge will extend again if we complete the test,” Gene suggested as they walked back through the testing hall.

“Nice try,” Tony said, laughing. “There’s got to be an emergency release lever, or…something.”

“I don’t think the guy who put these temples here was really concerned with safety features.”

But Tony wasn’t listening again; he was already running his hands over the stone wall in the foyer, occasionally tapping it to see if he could hear something hollow. Under other circumstances, the whole boy-adventurer routine would be entertaining. Right now, it was irritating.

Clearly there was no way out of this the way Gene wanted short of hitting Tony very hard with the blunt end of one of the weapons, doing the test himself, and pretending that some falling ice had been the culprit later, but he really didn’t think he could get Tony to a decent neurologist in time to prevent any serious brain damage that might cause. The thought made him laugh quietly to himself. _Like anyone would notice, the way he acts._ Still, he needed Tony alive and mostly intact, both because Tony was a useful asset on his own and because Howard Stark needed constant assurances about his son’s status to be cooperative.

Gene pretended to look for a catch in the wall on the other side of the room. He’d get them out of the temple without activating the ring, but he wouldn’t like it. Then something occurred to him. “Sometimes, in places like this, there are back exits built in, just in case something happens in the front, like a cave-in. Maybe we need to find a different way out.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Tony turned around. “You find anything on your end?”

“No, nothing,” Gene said. It helped that he hadn’t looked very hard, so he didn’t have to lie much either. “We’re pretty smart, though,” he said, making his way over to Tony’s side. “If anyone can find a hidden way to get out of here, we can.” He clapped a hand on Tony’s shoulder for a moment, then proceeded deeper into the temple. The brief pause before he heard footsteps following him again was a good sign. For all of his testing Gene’s patience, Stark was still on the leash.

“I thought I felt a breeze in here,” he said when they stepped back into the ring chamber. “It would follow that there’s some way to the outside. Hopefully some way that doesn’t involve using the ice axe I no longer have.” Had he been alone, he would have just teleported out, but he wanted to keep his secret identity a secret until the fiction was no longer necessary. It made things a little easier.

“I hope you’re right,” Tony said, and started looking.

After a good half-hour’s worth of poking and prodding around the ring chamber, Gene managed to locate the source of the airflow, and was able to pry open the secret door with Tony’s help. There was light down towards the end of the tunnel, cool and blue, obviously filtering down through ice and snow. “Let’s hope the exit hasn’t frozen over, huh?” Tony said as he started off down the passageway, trying to sound cheerful. There was a degree of nervousness in how he was acting, though; maybe he realized that if it had frozen over, or if it led nowhere, the two of them could very well be stuck in the heart of the glacier. _Like hell,_ Gene thought; if he had to incapacitate Tony to escape he’d do it, but he would prefer not to need such measures. But if the only other option was revealing that he was the Mandarin, the choice was obvious.

Gene followed him down the icy passageway. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement not to make too much noise as they progressed; neither of them wanted the frozen tunnel to come crashing down on their heads. But the going was slow, and tough, especially since Gene had lost his ice axe. There was a lot of clambering over obstacles on the slowly sloping pathway, and several times one or the other slipped backwards and fell down, adding more scrapes and bruises.

After about an hour of this tortured progression, the exhaustion began to set in. Tempers started to fray, and the occasional discontented muttering about their situation turned into more audible, pointed sniping at each other.

“If we’d activated the test, this wouldn’t be happening,” Gene said for about the sixth time as Tony missed a step and fell down.

“Yeah, ‘cause if we activated the test, we’d probably be _dead_ ,” Tony said through gritted teeth as he got back to his feet.

“Not if you actually followed my advice for once, Stark.”

“Last time we did _that_ , we unleashed an entire temple’s worth of Dreadknights. Actually, _that_ was all on you.” Tony grunted as he dug the remaining axe into a sizable lump of glacier ice that reared up in front of them. “Who even reads out loud from a mysterious book in an ancient temple? Did you never see _The Mummy_?”

“Forgive me for not being as pop-culture savvy as you are,” Gene said, angry sarcasm rolling off his words as he followed Tony over the lump, “but without me, you wouldn’t have been able to activate your father’s ring in the first place, seeing as you don’t read Chinese.”

Rather than deflate him, mentioning Tony’s father seemed to turn his anger to a low, concentrated simmer. “Shut up,” he spat, glaring daggers at Gene, his fists clenched.

The childish response, prompted by cold, pain, and hunger, nearly happened automatically. “Make me.”

Tony did.

For a second Gene had wondered if he’d pushed too hard, worried he’d provoked Tony to actual violence, but the ice axe had clattered to the ground, so if he was going to be hit it was at least with a fist and nothing that could take out any vital organs. The chill and the exertion had dulled his reflexes, and all he could do was brace for the oncoming punch.

 _That_ was not a punch.

Not even close.

It was like ice from the tunnel wall had been driven into his brain and frozen it, because he literally could not process what was happening. At least, half of his brain was stuck on the fact that instead of punching him, Tony Stark had _kissed him on the mouth_. The other half of his brain was working at triple speed trying to figure out the consequences of this sudden and unintentional escalation of his prolonged war on Stark’s emotions.

Hell, he was half-worried he’d accidentally _broken_ the guy.

While all of this was going on in his head, Gene had completely frozen up, and after a few seconds Tony stepped back. All of his anger seemed to have transmuted into shame and embarrassment, and he couldn’t meet Gene’s eyes. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened, I think the hypothermia has affected my brain, I, I don’t…”

Gene’s brain was now entirely going triple-time as he stared at Tony. If he didn’t reciprocate – and every second he didn’t would make it more difficult to succeed – then Tony Stark would be of no use as an asset. He’d refuse to be alone around Gene, and grow distant, and that would be the end of that. But if he did…that was a complication he hadn’t accounted for, not in his wildest extrapolations of Stark’s erratic behavior. He never thought that Stark would actually _do something_ about his crush, and especially not in a situation this heated. He’d have to rewrite all his plans to account for this new development.

Gene made his decision. “ _Bì zuǐ_ ,” he snapped at Tony, who was beginning to babble, and kissed him back.

_Please let this be the right decision._

Well, at least it _had_ actually shocked him into shutting up. It took Tony a few seconds to realize that this was in fact actually happening and that he was in fact perfectly fine with it, and then it stopped being a little like kissing a very confused block of wood.

Tony actually began to participate, which was a good sign; Gene felt him grab at the furred ruff of his parka, trying to pull him closer. Gene obliged, trapping Tony between himself and the ice wall as they kissed. After a moment, Tony made a shocked noise, pulled back from the kiss, and accidentally smacked the back of his head into the tunnel wall. “Aaah—ow! _Cold_!” He leveled his gaze at Gene. “What did you just say a minute ago?”

_Minute and a half. But who’s counting?_

“ _Bì zuǐ_ ,” Gene repeated, then leaned over to whisper in Tony’s ear: “It means ‘shut up’.”

Tony shivered a little, laughed, and shoved him away. “You are such an _asshole_!” But he was grinning when he said it.

Gene grinned back, a little mischief in his eyes, and kissed Tony again briefly. “Come on,” he said, and bent down to scoop up the ice axe. “I think we’re getting close to the surface.”

For all that had been a close shave, Stark was back on the leash again.

And as they emerged into the light and cold wind of the surface, Gene wondered if he’d just made things a thousand times worse than they could have been otherwise.

*

Even though whatever magic powered the rings and summoned the Mandarin’s armor made it weigh approximately the same as heavy clothes to the wearer, fighting in the armor was still as exhausting as a regular fight, if not more so. And despite the impending change to the world that would be wrought with the Five Rings, for the moment appearances still had to be maintained – namely, the appearance of being a perfectly normal rich kid.

A perfectly normal rich kid who had to run the storefront while his stepfather was away on an extended business trip, but a perfectly normal, non-supervillain rich kid all the same.

The shop kept strange hours to discourage the average curious window-shopper from stopping in, and Gene’s generally aggressive nature when it came to the artifacts within kept the few brave souls who happened to wander by at the right time from actually making a purchase.

Naturally, none of this ever stopped Tony from coming to visit. Gene usually took advantage of the forced quiet time to do his homework. It barely interested him, but keeping up appearances was the name of the game, and most of the stuff in his classes was child’s play. That, and he’d tested out of needing a foreign language class, so he had even more spare time to take care of his own business.

He’d come to expect these visits a couple of times a week, because Tony had an uncanny ability to know when the shop was open. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he was being stalked.

The shop bell rang to announce a visitor, and Gene barely looked up. Then he remembered the trip to the glacier and all of its associated baggage, and did a very convincing impression of a double-take. “Tony, hey,” he said, trying to sound casual and failing. He shoved his Physics book off to the side. _Wasn’t interesting anyway._ His aching muscles were a lesson in applied physics all on their own. “What’s up?”

Tony looked kind of sheepish as he approached the counter, one thumb shoved into the corner of his jeans pocket. “Um…this isn’t easy to say, but I have some bad news.”

“Oh?” Gene leaned across the counter, making sure to seem curious. “What is it?”

“I, uh…I lost the ring,” Tony admitted.

Gene’s face went from curious to stunned disbelief in about 0.2 seconds. It was that, or laugh himself unconscious. He managed to speak, though it took some effort; he hoped he sounded angry. “You _lost_ …you. You lost the ri—how did you _lose_ the _ring_?!” He rested his elbows on the counter and put his head in his hands.

“Well…did you hear all of those loud thudding noises from earlier?” Tony asked, sounding miserable.

“Was that all you _dropping the ring_?”

Tony didn’t deign to answer that. “You remember the guardian from the temple? I don’t know how, but it woke up and came all the way from Greenland for the ring. I had given it to Rhodey to hold on to—”

“You gave it to Rhodes?”

“—and I took it back and ran so he wouldn’t get hurt, but it followed me – and it was huge, it’ll be on the news later if it isn’t already, like Godzilla huge – and it was going to crush me but then Iron Man came out of nowhere and knocked me out of the way, and I…lost the ring.” Tony was looking down at his shoes by this point. “The guardian must have gotten it back at some point, or something, because it’s not there anymore. I looked everywhere. Who knows where it is by now?”

 _On a string around my neck._ “I can’t believe you lost it,” Gene groaned, lifting his head out of his hands. It would have been nice to take off the necklace and show Tony that the ring wasn’t lost, that Gene had managed to get it back somehow, but that would raise too many questions that he wasn’t comfortable answering. Like why he also had the ring that used to belong to Tony’s father, among other things.

No. Far simpler to fake anger and let Stark wallow in guilt about his carelessness, while Gene held all the cards. “I can’t _believe_ you lost it,” he said again.

“I know,” Tony said, sounding miserable. He really _was_ looking at the floor, and seemed to have somehow made himself smaller. This was the attitude of someone who was used to being yelled at when they screwed up, especially when the screw-up had been reflected upon at length before arriving for the scolding, and Gene saw a little too much in that pose that looked familiar.

Gene sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look…if the guardian got the ring it’s going to go back to the temple and wait for us to try again. That’s kind of its job. So maybe we go get the others first before going back to get that one. Just…look, you have my number, don’t you? _Call_ me next time something weird and ancient starts coming after a ring. Okay?”

Tony looked up, a little warily. “Okay.”

“Good.” He exhaled. “I’m still mad at you for losing it.”

“I know.”

“Next time _I_ get to keep the ring.”

“Sounds fair.”

“All right.”

There was a long pause. “You don’t…you don’t _hate_ me, do you?” Tony asked, his eyes still unable to focus on anything but the ground.

This was all far too familiar. And Gene knew exactly what he meant, too, even if he didn’t spell it out. He didn’t have to. Stark was worried that their brief kiss would remain a solitary moment of indiscretion because of his screw-up.

The very thought made Gene feel a bit odd, and he didn’t know why.

“No,” he said, sighing, “No, I don’t hate you. I’m _mad_ at you, but I don’t hate you. Trust me, you’ll learn the difference one way or the other.”

Stark seemed a little confused. “Does that mean you still wanna…” He made some vague ‘going out’ hand gestures to accompany the words he couldn’t quite spit out.

“Give me some time. Because I’m still angry with you,” Gene said, the lies rolling easily off his tongue. “But, Stark?” Tony looked up, finally meeting his eyes for the first time since he’d come into the shop. “I don’t hate you.”

Tony’s expression changed subtly at the reprieve; some of the tension seemed to go out of his face, and his shoulders eased. Clearly he’d anticipated a lot more yelling and anger. Maybe Gene should have delivered more on that count. Still, being angry with Stark was like being angry with a puppy that hadn’t been house-trained. It didn’t do anything but scare the puppy and it certainly didn’t help train it. And it was always desperate to ingratiate itself with its owner again.

Stark even almost smiled.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Just…yeah. Okay.” He shifted the backpack on his shoulders. “We’ll try again later.” He could have been talking about the rings, or the…whatever-it-was they were going to call it. Date, maybe. He could even have been talking about both. To Gene, it was immaterial. “See you at school then.”

“Yeah. See you,” he said as Tony left the shop. The bell rang to announce Tony’s departure back onto Canal Street, and suddenly Gene felt very alone.

He picked up his Physics textbook again and cracked it open to the section he'd been reading on the laws of thermodynamics.

_"In an isolated system, entropy can only increase."_

Loneliness was a disadvantage and friends were only worth what you could get out of them. That was what he kept telling himself as he idly toyed with the rings dangling from his necklace.

Especially the newest one. Courage.

_I fear nothing._

But he knew that wasn’t quite true.

*

It was difficult to avoid Tony for the next few days – school made it nearly impossible – and his usual exuberance was subdued. Rhodes and Potts tried to engage Tony in conversation, which Gene made note of from a distance, but he just didn’t seem too excited about whatever it was, even when Pepper got up in his face about it. Losing the ring had hurt him badly, that much was obvious. How much of that was because of Gene’s display of anger?

 _Don’t give yourself too much credit,_ he cautioned himself. As far as Stark was concerned, the rings were valuable to science, and also because they were the last link that he had to his father that wasn’t owned wholly by Stark International.

In a way, Gene knew how he felt. The cold fury that had coursed through him every time he saw Zhang wearing the ring that had belonged to his mother was what had given him the strength and the resolve to oust Zhang and reclaim his birthright from the power-hungry bastard. But at least Stark’s exile from what he had left of his family had an expiry date. Gene’s was permanent.

At least it was without the rings. With the rings…who knew? And he only had two left to find.

He’d lied to Tony. Tony was smart. Tony was practical. He’d get over it, when he learned the truth. He’d probably be angry until he realized the true potential of the rings. Then he’d be tripping over himself to help. His friends, too. Maybe, if Gene was feeling generous, he’d give Pepper domain over Australia. Rhodes could have Europe. He didn’t really care about Europe.

But for the first time in a long while, things were looking up.


	2. xx. stir the waters

**Tomorrow Academy, New York City, USA.  
Three months before it all goes wrong.**

> You disturb my natural emotions  
>  You make me feel I'm dirt  
>  And I'm hurt  
>  And if I start a commotion  
>  I'll only end up losing you  
>  And that's worse…
> 
>     - The Buzzcocks, “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”

Tony’s locker was the usual meeting point for discussing ring-related news, and Gene hadn’t heard anything new from him in a while. He had a free period coming up, so he swung by that corridor between classes to see if Tony was getting something from his locker.

When he was bored, which was quite often, Tony would tweak things in his locker. Last time Gene had seen it, it had housed a soda machine; he’d heard something about an influx of ants, so that probably wasn’t there anymore. Sure enough, from what he could tell, Tony was arm-deep in what looked like a freezer, rummaging for something.

“You know, I’m pretty sure that’s against school policy,” Gene said, and Tony turned around, grinning.

“Yeah, but as long as I don’t bring the ants back, they don’t really care,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” Gene said, leaning against a nearby locker. “I’ve got a free period coming up if you want to hang out.”

“Lucky,” Tony said. “I’ve got math next. I could skip, but I’m on probation as it is.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, I’m not a fan,” Tony said, shutting his locker and turning back to Gene. “Anyway, I’ve got a few minutes to chat.”

“Cool.” Gene was going to try something new. He’d read that people were more likely to be compliant if they were spoken to in their right ear; he’d resolved to try that out on Stark as a subtle way to keep him on the leash. He leaned forward, gently touching Tony’s arm, and said quietly, “You got any more info on the rings? My research hasn’t come up with much.”

Tony’s reaction was unexpected. He closed his eyes and shivered, and said “Don’t do that again.”

Snag in the plan. Gene’s arm dropped and he stepped back, worried he’d crossed a line. “Something the matter?”

“Not really,” Tony said quietly, opened his eyes, and smirked. “Just if you do that again I might not be able to stop myself from pushing you up against the lockers and kissing you senseless.”

Gene was halfway tempted to test that. “That’s not really a disincentive.”

“All the same, we’d get collared by the teachers. And Whitney might kill one or both of us.” Tony returned his voice to normal levels. “But to answer your question, no, I haven’t found much new. I have no idea how anyone would have been able to find them without the internet. The Mandarin guy must have been really thorough about hiding them. Though, actually…” He bit his lip. “How much time do we have?”

“Eight minutes until the bell. You want to compare notes?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Come on, this way.”

“Sure,” Gene said, following him down into a side-spur of the hallway. It only made sense not to talk about the rings in a public setting.

“Yeah, this classroom should be free,” Tony said, poking his head into a room. It was one of the art classrooms; since the Tomorrow Academy was largely science-based, the art rooms didn’t see much use.

“All right,” said Gene, shutting the door behind him. “I didn’t bring anything written down, but I remember a lot of what I f--”

_Oh._

Well okay then.

He really shouldn’t have been surprised that this had been an excuse to drag him into a deserted area and make out with him, because Tony had as much as said he would do exactly that. And, of course, Gene had encouraged him. He’d just been so focused on the rings that he had completely missed that he had been leading Tony on, and that Tony had quite obviously been leading him to this.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to do this unless I whispered in your ear again,” he said, pulling back as much as he could, given that his back was right up against the wall.

“I only said I wasn’t going to push you up against the _lockers_ and make out with you,” Tony said with an impish grin. “The wall in the art room is fair game. And you didn’t seem to have any problem with it.”

“I really don’t,” Gene said, and kissed Tony back. Sure, it was all part of his grand master plan. Didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to enjoy himself, after all. This was just an added perk.

When it all came down to it, he really, _really_ liked kissing Tony. Especially when Tony would grip his upper arm and press him right up against the wall like there was nothing else in the world that could be more important than the pair of them. His hands settled on Tony’s waist, eliciting some surprised laughter from Tony in the vein of ‘That’s all you’ve got?’.

He really ought to have known better than to test Gene, because the very next thing Gene did was slide his hand down to Tony’s ass and grab, making Tony gasp. He didn’t have any opportunity to gloat about it, though, because Tony’s instinctive reaction was to shift his hips in such a way as to make Gene moan, pulling back. “ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, feeling dizzy.

“Good idea, but we totally do not have time for that,” Tony said, grinning.

“You unbelievable d-” was all that Gene was able to get out before Tony kissed him again. _God_ , it wasn’t fair how Tony could do this to him. It was supposed to be the other way around, _he_ was supposed to be the one driving Tony crazy with need. He hadn’t even started this madness and he was the one melting.

God _damn_ , how did Tony get so good at this?

Gene was not about to let Tony win so easily. He remembered Tony’s reaction to the last time he’d tried using his teeth, and did so again, nibbling on Tony’s lower lip. Tony let out a noise somewhere between a gasp and a moan; Gene decided he quite liked that noise, and did that again. This time Tony was prepared for that, and in retaliation pressed up against Gene like he had before. Gene had not been similarly braced, and it showed in his reaction.

“ _Húndàn_ ,” he breathed, resting his forehead on Tony’s shoulder.

“I should probably be very offended by what you just called me.”

“Probably.”

“I’m considering it high praise instead.”

A loud tone rang out, and Gene swore. “That’s the warning bell. You’d better go.”

“I dunno. I kinda like where I am right now.”

Gene hit him on the arm. “Go, you stupid _shǎguā_.”

“You’re gonna tell me what that means later,” Tony said, laughing, and grabbed his backpack.

“Or what?”

“Or _else_ ,” Tony said, making a face at him. “See you after class.”

“Count on it.”

After Tony left, Gene staggered over to the nearby table, trying to steady himself. He was incredibly glad he had a free period now, because there was absolutely no way he could concentrate on classwork after that. He was honestly surprised that Tony could, but knowing Tony, there was not going to be a whole lot of concentration occurring in class anyway.

Well, he had his answer on how Tony would react to that particular psychological trick. He decided that maybe next time he shouldn’t test out that type of coercion while they were both at school. After school was fair game, though.

He laughed a little and left the room. Okay. So he was going to see Tony after school. Damned if he wasn’t still going to get that information about the ring, though.

*

“Hey! Gene! Are you awake in there?” Pepper asked, knocking on his desk.

“Huh?” Gene gave a start, shocked out of his daydream. Everyone was filing out of the study hall; the final bell must have gone off without him noticing.

“Helloooo?” Pepper asked, changing tactics and knocking on his head.

“Ow! Cut it out!” He swatted at her hands, and she yanked them away, grinning. He was glad she seemed to have taken a shine to him lately; having to deal with her constant suspicion had been wearying, not least because the suspicion wasn’t without merit.

“School’s out, come on,” she said. “Unless you want to stay here.”

“Not really, if it’s all the same to you,” he said, gathering up his things. The last few hours of the day had dragged on forever and seemed to take no time at all; the effect was a little disorienting. It went by a lot quicker after he’d realized he didn’t have any more homework to take care of in study hall and could put the remainder of the class period to better use. Namely, for a post-game analysis of the earlier makeout session.

It made it a little easier to think of it like a competition; it kept him from getting too emotionally involved, which he understood was a danger of this particular variety of manipulation. And so far, by his count, he was still winning. Mostly because Stark’s ability to turn his spine to jelly was cheating, and therefore didn’t count.

He followed Pepper to Tony’s locker. A silly grin threatened to break out across his face as he remembered Tony’s threat from earlier, and he had to actively work to keep from smirking.

Tony was chilling out by his locker - quite literally, since he was chowing down on an ice cream treat. “Hey, guys,” he said, peeling the wrapper back a little more. “Rhodey’s staying behind, I think he has Model UN practice today.” He looked directly at Gene. “How was your free period?”

“Boring, as usual,” Gene said, “but at least it wasn’t a class I could pass in my sleep. I feel like that might be worse.”

“Nah, math was cool, I got to work on some schematics for a new rocket engine while everyone else was trying to find sin x,” Tony said. “You guys want anything?” He tapped his locker door with his knuckles. “I’ve got Drumsticks. And...Choco Tacos.”

“I’m okay,” Pepper said, looking around. “Oh! Actually...I just remembered, I promised my dad I’d go ask about...clarinet lessons! Yeah! So, I’d better go do that. I’ll catch you guys tomorrow!” Before she could be questioned about her sudden interest in music, she ran off, leaving the two boys staring after her, a little bit confused.

“I didn’t know she played the clarinet,” Tony said after a minute, then turned to Gene, holding the ice cream bar out towards him. “So...I gotta ask. What would _you_ do for a Klondike bar?”

"I don't understand that reference."

"Yeah you do," Tony said, laughing and waving the ice cream bar at him.

"Get that out of my face."

"It's not in your face, it's in my hand."

"Then get what's in your _hand_ out of my face."

"Aw, come on, have a bite. I can't finish it by myself."

"No way," Gene said, shoving him gently. "That's been in your mouth."

"So has your tongue, but I don't see _you_ complaining." Tony took advantage of Gene’s stunned ‘did you just’ moment to poke him in the mouth with the Klondike bar. “Eat.”

“Ack--no! Tony! Cut it out! I don’t want any of your damn ice cream!”

“Oh,” said Tony, and leaned closer. “So you won’t mind if I take it back then?”

Gene shoved him away again. "As smooth as that line was, that would be a bad idea. Or aren't you worried about Whitney killing us?"

"She wouldn't kill me." Tony said, grinning, and took another bite of the Klondike bar. "I'm too pretty."

"Yes, especially when you talk with your mouth full," Gene said dryly.

“ _Damn_ straight.”

“Tell me, Stark...is sarcasm a foreign concept to you?”

“No? I just choose to ignore it.”

Gene shook his head. “You’re impossible. Come on. Let’s go study.”

“Sure, yeah, _study_ ,” Tony said, laughing.

Gene shoved the Klondike bar into Tony’s mouth. "Shh." One way to shut him up, at least. Less fun than some, but there was a time and a place for everything, after all.

The hallway at school was neither the time nor the place. Elsewhere? All bets were off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance if any of my Mandarin profanity was inaccurate; I'm working from what I learned back in middle school. Drop me a line if you see something that needs corrected!


	3. xxx. host and guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gene turns his attention to Rhodes, who stands between him and victory, and finds a more implacable foe than he expected.

**New York City, USA.  
One month before it all goes wrong.**

> “Tell your boyfriend if he says he’s got beef
> 
> that I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t fuckin’ scared of him.”
> 
> \- 3OH!3, “Don’t Trust Me”

 

James Rhodes was a threat.

Gene had known this for a while, and now that Pepper had been turned to his side, the only thing standing between him and unlimited access to Tony’s mind, among other things, was his best friend.

And unfortunately for Gene, Rhodes seemed to have a highly attuned bullshit detector.

He’d dealt with Rhodes before, for a given value of ‘dealt with’, anyway - that at least sounded better than ‘manipulated him and then hit him on the head with a rock’. Somehow he had the feeling that wouldn’t quite work a second time. And would probably lead to a brain injury, which he’d prefer to avoid, all things considered.

This left Gene in a precarious situation. He somehow had to get Rhodes out of the way while keeping his involvement under wraps. He could still operate with Rhodes underfoot, but it wouldn’t be easy. Better to neutralize the threat as best he could while ensuring neither Rhodes nor Tony suspected a thing.

Much to his irritation, he couldn’t find a way to do it. Whichever way he devised would set off alarm bells in _someone_ ’s head, and he couldn’t figure out how to head that reaction off. Well, _fine_ , he decided one night between problem sets in his trig homework; if the mountain wouldn’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad had to go to the mountain. Put another way: He had to somehow finagle his way onto Rhodes’ good side.

That presented its own set of problems. For whatever reason, Rhodes didn’t quite trust him. He’d even been able to win over Pepper, who he’d thought would be the staunchest challenge, but Rhodes was something else entirely.

Additionally, if Rhodes sussed out the exact nature of Gene’s relationship with Tony, there would be some variety of hell to pay, given how little he cared for Gene. He would prefer to avoid that scenario, if possible.

So when the two of them got paired together on an assignment for history class, Gene preferred to look at it as an opportunity rather than the universe having a cruel, sick sense of humor. (It was just as well he hadn’t been paired with Tony, really, he thought; there would not have been much schoolwork going on, knowing Tony, and knowing how he acted around Tony. For the sake of both of their GPAs, this was a blessing in disguise. Even if, on the surface, it sucked hardcore.)

Rhodes took a good, long look at him when they’d been given leave to break into their individual groups for the rest of the class period. “What do you know about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?” he said at long last.

Gene shrugged. “Next to nothing. I wish we’d been assigned Manchukuo.” He couldn’t resist a glare at Hogan; he’d been lucky enough to get that as the random topic draw. And unlucky enough to be partnered with Rhona Erwin. Not that Hogan saw it that way, of course; he was flexing his not inconsiderable muscles and trying to talk to her about pizza. Erwin was doing her best to ignore him.

“Wow, can’t believe you admitted to not knowing something. _That’_ s a first. Well, think of this as an opportunity to fill some gaps in your knowledge,” Rhodes said, and Gene swore he could almost hear an air of condescension in his voice. Great. This was going to be harder than he thought, and not just because he was going to have to devote a good deal of his mental energy to not storming out of the group in frustration. So he forced an uneasy smile onto his face and began reading about non-aggression pacts. And all the while, he was thinking about how he could possibly, somehow, get Rhodes properly on his side.

*

They met after school at Rhodes’ house. Gene had rejected the idea of it happening at his house, claiming that Zhang had just returned from a business trip and was suffering from jetlag, and also implying that it made him testy. Which, in part, was accurate; jetlag _did_ make Zhang testy, but he hadn’t left the basement of the compound in months. Regardless, he was testy, or perhaps _beyond_ testy, at this point.

They spread out in the abandoned warehouse out back, since Tony and his partner Whitney Stane were occupying the living room. Gene felt an unexpected - and surely unwarranted - stab of jealousy that they had been paired together...but at least it kept him out of the living room, which kept him away from the visual reminder of the couch that he and Tony had made out on not that long ago. He did _not_ need that kind of distraction right now, nor that kind of temptation.

He eschewed all thoughts of the other person living here with a firm hand and returned his attention to his studies. But despite all that, there was something like a cloud of awkwardness hanging over the entire study session. Rhodes had offered him soda and some tortilla chips, ever the gracious host, but the two boys weren’t comfortable with each other, that much was plain.

It was only a matter of time before one of them cracked.

Surprisingly, it was Gene.

“You don’t like me,” he said, not looking up from his textbook.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rhodes shrug. “Nope. I don’t _dislike_ you either, really.”

Gene turned the page a little more forcefully than he meant to. “So what the hell does _that_ mean? Do you have any opinion on me at _all_?”

“Yeah,” Rhodes said. “I think you’re arrogant, I think you’re kind of a jerk, and I think you’re bad for Tony. He gets wilder when he’s around you. Almost manic, you know?” He shrugged again. “But you knew all that. I mean, I’m not gonna like you, probably, as long as those things are still in play. But, for whatever reason, Tony likes you. Pepper likes you. _Happy_ likes you, but, I mean, Happy likes everyone. And I have to believe they can’t be _totally_ delusional. I guess there’s something about you I’m just not seeing yet.” All of this was delivered in a totally neutral, non-hostile tone - which somehow set Gene’s hackles up even more.

Still, he managed to force the irritation down. “Oh, is _that_ all?” he drawled.

“You _did_ ask.” _God_ , Rhodes was blunt. Under other circumstances, Gene might have found that refreshing. Now? Now, he just found it _extremely irritating_. “Look, man, I don’t want to get into this whole thing, all right? We have a project to do, and I _know_ you’re smart enough not to leave me hanging and doing all the work. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, right?”

“...right,” Gene said, feeling unsure.

“You all right with where you stand, or do we need to draw up a flowchart?”

“Whatever,” Gene said, trying to sound like he truly did not care. And really, he only cared insofar as Rhodes’ cooperation could advance his ends. It didn’t matter if Tony’s friends liked him. It wasn’t like they were his friends, after all. He didn’t _have_ friends, only pawns and one sort-of boyfriend pawn. He _couldn’t_ have friends. All they would do is get in his way. “Have you found anything on the annexation of Bessarabia or not?”

*

Things settled into an uneasy truce between the pair of them after that - not like their truce had ever been anything but rocky in the first place. But Rhodes at least seemed to be a little happier with where they stood, knowing that Gene now knew that he was keeping an eye on him. Rhodes was protective of Tony, that much was plain. And why not? Stark was certainly in need of protection. It seemed like every other week something absurd was happening to him, and he certainly was a high-value target for people other than Gene, anyway.

But Gene always kept an eye on himself and his behavior around Rhodes after that. He still didn’t think Rhodes was a match for him, but something about his brutal frankness spoke to trouble in the future.

If he wanted to get _anywhere_ with Tony, if he wanted to make this official at some point, Rhodes would be a serious issue.

And Gene couldn’t find his weak point, which troubled him more than he cared to admit.


	4. xiv. raise the dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything falls apart.

**New York City, USA.**  
 **Two weeks before it all goes wrong.**

> _“Would you leave me if I told you what I’d done?_  
>  _And would you need me if I told you what I’ve become?_  
>  _'Cause it's so easy to say it to a crowd,_  
>  _but it's so hard, my love, to say it to you out loud…”_  
>  _\- Florence + the Machine, “No Light, No Light”_

  
Every morning and every evening, like many other kids, Gene had to take care of his pets. Unlike most other kids, his pets were people.  
  
He didn’t particularly enjoy feeding Zhang, but much to his distaste he had to keep the old bastard alive because he might be useful. The irony of the situation - that Zhang had been doing the same to Gene for years and years - was in no way lost on him. So Gene treated him much the same way he would treat a mushroom; that is, he was kept in the dark and fed shit.  
  
Of course, his other pet required more than that. Mushroom tactics wouldn’t work on Howard Stark. They never had. This meant that every day after school, and before starting his homework, Gene had to go down to the basement and give Stark the standard, if somewhat menacing, assurances that his son was still alive and healthy.  
  
(Gene hadn’t mentioned the chest implant. Some things, Stark didn’t need to know, and he _definitely_ didn’t need to know how Gene knew about it. He didn’t need another reason for Stark to hate him, there were already enough.)  
  
When he stood in front of the barred portal to the oubliette, he could see Stark steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his existence. His stubbornness would be commendable, really, if it wasn’t so inherently futile.  
  
It was strange and infuriating how the way that Stark withheld his attention, even in a situation where he had no power whatsoever, made Gene feel small. He cleared his throat. “We all left campus at lunch today,” he began. “Pepper wanted to get frozen yogurt. Tony put at least thirty of those weird juice popper bubbles on his. Then he started throwing them at us whenever we interrupted his train of thought.”  
  
There was no response from the man in the cell. Gene continued to speak, his pride stung as it often was during these alleged conversations. “He’s been more erratic than usual lately. He made a trebuchet out of school supplies and accidentally flung an eraser at the teacher’s face. I thought it was hilarious. He got detention. Again.”  
  
Still nothing. “I don’t have any insight into why he’s been acting out,” Gene said, feeling both slightly foolish and like he was participating in some sort of bizarre parent-teacher conference.  
  
After a good two minutes of silence, Stark responded without looking up. “His mother,” he said, with a voice hoarse with disuse. “We’re approaching the anniversary of her death.”  
  
 _That_ stung more than these conversations usually did. Gene didn’t want to show his deep discomfort, but he had a feeling that Stark could tell anyway. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just left.  
  
It was impossible, but he thought he could hear Zhang’s laughter ringing down the hall behind him.  


*

The next morning at school, Gene met Tony by his locker. The Stark boy’s usual smile was brittle, and he was hammering at the buttons in the vending machine that now occupied the space a little more angrily than was strictly necessary. “Tony, hey,” Gene said, and for a split second when Tony turned to face him he could swear that he saw the other boy scowling.  
  
“Hey, what’s up?” Tony said, his voice sounding a little more strained than usual.  
  
“Not a whole lot,” he replied, before dropping into a conspiratorial tone. “Look, I...heard about your mother. About how the anniversary is coming up, and--”  
  
The fake smile dropped from Tony’s face. “So what, did you hop on Wikipedia for that?”  
  
“I saw it on the news. You know those vultures, they’ll pick at anything for the ratings.” That at least was true; some of the less reputable shows had begun running an introspective series that reached Charles-and-Diana levels of maudlin exploitation of the tragic deaths of two high-profile public figures. “Anyway. I just wanted to say...I’m sorry.” He swallowed, hard, because that wasn’t a lie. He didn’t need to doubt, the last ring was practically within his grasp. But he was beginning to feel really bad about everything he’d done to the Starks. Not that he would ever admit it. “When I was about the age you were...I lost my mother too. So I get it.”  
  
Tony blinked at him, looking surprised. “I never knew that. You never talk about her.”  
  
“For the same reason you don’t. It hurts too much.” Gene’s smile was as brittle as Tony’s had been a moment earlier. “It was shortly after she was married to Zhang. _That_ was a lucky break, right? I could have ended up without anyone to look after me.” The sour irony was practically dripping from his words.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Tony said, looking genuinely sympathetic, happier to focus on someone else’s problems than his own. “What happened?”  
  
Gene took a breath. “She was killed.”  
  
“Jesus,” Tony said, taken aback. “Did they catch whoever did it?”  
  
Gene shook his head. “No. He hasn’t been brought to justice yet.” Gene was going to flay every inch of skin off of Zhang’s miserable body and make him eat it before taking a salt bath the very instant he was sure he didn’t need to keep that mother-murdering bastard alive any longer. “Anyway,” he said, “I figured...I know what it’s like, too. To lose someone like that.”  
  
Tony clapped him on the shoulder, looking awkward rather than upset. “Thanks...thanks,” he said, staring right at Gene. He moved as if he was going to kiss Gene on the cheek, but then thought better of it and shut his locker instead. “See you in class.”  
  
“Yeah. I’m really sorry.”  
  
“Me too,” Tony said. He reached out, took Gene’s hand briefly, and gave it a sympathetic, understanding squeeze before running off.  
  
And Gene had to turn back towards the lockers to keep the crushing guilt he felt for a second from showing on his face.  


* * *

**Machu Picchu, Peru.**  
 **Five minutes after it all goes wrong.**  
  
It wasn’t supposed to go this way.  
  
It wasn’t. It wasn’t. _It wasn’t!_  
  
But as things unfolded, Gene couldn’t see how it could possibly have turned out differently.  
  
He was hurting. _God_ , he was hurting, like the ice from the ring had frozen his heart and kept it from bursting with anguish and pain, leaving it heavy and cold in his chest. He was an animal, a wounded animal, and for one moment - when he saw the hurt and fear in Tony’s eyes - he regretted everything he’d done. But the regret was soon swamped by anger. The anger was safe; the anger could guide his hand and he could lose himself in it. He could let himself be swept away by the rising tide of his own rage and let it drown his own pain and fear and regret and leave behind only the cold indifference he’d worn like a mask his whole life.  
  
He pretended that it didn’t hurt.  
  
He pretended that this was the way it had always been intended to unfold.  
  
And he knew he was lying to himself.  
  
 _Please, let me fix it,_ he thought desperately, but the rings had no power with which to grant his wish. His bridges were burning, and he thought he felt himself burning right along with them.  
  
He had one ace left to play, and he played it.  
  
He mentioned Howard.  
  
And he could tell Tony’s heart was cracking as he kept talking; first the disbelief, then the betrayal, then the anger, hot and seething to rival Gene’s own.  
  
Gene did the only thing that made sense. He ran. He didn’t run far, but he ran, and when the teleportation bubble resolved itself fifty miles away in the jungle he sank to his knees and suppressed a scream.  
  
There was nothing he could do. There was nothing left to be done. He had gained the world, and lost his soul.  
  
 _I take it back. I take it back!_ He knew this bell couldn’t be unrung, but he desperately wanted to change it. The rings wouldn’t even allow him that much. And for a moment - just a moment - he _hated_ them. He hated the rings, he hated Tony, he hated his mother.  
  
Most of all, he hated himself.


	5. xxxvi. if all else fails, retreat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because running away from your problems is always better than facing them head-on.

**Shanghai, PRC.  
One month after it all goes wrong.**

> _Back in school they never taught us what we needed to know,_  
>  like how to deal with despair, or someone breaking your heart.  
>  For twelve years I've held it all together,  
>  but a night like this is begging to pull me apart.  
>  \- Brand New, “Seventy Times 7” 

It’s remarkable how quickly the sight of something unexpected can change your heart rate.

Howard Stark couldn’t be trusted on his own, so Gene had put him back in his cell and returned to Shanghai for supplies. That was half of his reasoning, anyway; the other half was that he needed to think, and getting lost in a city he knew was one way of going about it. It was nice to just walk. Blend in. Become invisible in the crowd.

Not a luxury he’d have when he collected all ten rings, after all, so he might as well enjoy it while he could.

Before he even knew it, he was downtown in the financial district, the Stark International building looming large over other, smaller skyscrapers. It didn’t beat the World Financial Center, but not for lack of trying.

He scanned the crowd, keeping his eyes peeled as he’d needed to learn to do, before seeing something that made his heart jump into his throat.

Right then - right just then, coming out of the building - he swore he saw Tony Stark.

His first instinct was to bolt, to just drop everything and run, but he knew that would attract attention. So he turned away down the next side street, and as soon as he could be sure that nobody was paying any special attention to him he ran like the devil himself was on his heels.

Five minutes later he’d managed to get as many city blocks away, and he ducked into an alley to catch his breath. He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, staring at nothing.

Had that really been Tony? He couldn’t be sure. It would only make sense if that had been him, though, and Gene berated himself for being so cocky as to come within spitting distance of a Stark building. They were not safe territory, and they wouldn’t be until this was all over.

Even if that hadn’t been Tony coming out of the building, it had been a dumb move.

And if it had been...Gene laughed a little to himself, shaking, still trying to catch his breath. What would he have done then? If it had been a fight Tony was looking for, Gene was more than a match for him without the armor and without the rings. He was a _liu duan_ in Wushu, a Gold Tiger, well up to Tony’s clumsy maneuvering he’d seen in the armor.

_So why did I run?_

He knew why, why the terror had gripped his brain and barely let him keep it together long enough to remove himself from the area before freaking out.

One of the things they don’t teach you, no matter how many _duan_ you gain, is how to defend against someone with a broken heart.

One of the things he’d never been taught was how to say he was sorry.

He was still angry at Tony for breaking his trust. He was willing to bet all ten rings that Tony was angrier.

Tears were pricking at the corners of his eyes as he stood there shaking, and his breathing was still ragged. His heart rate wouldn’t slow down and he was drenched in sweat, and he knew it wasn’t just due to the running or even the narrow escape he’d had.

It was the possibility of trying to fix that broken trust that scared him the most.

*

It took several more minutes for him to compose himself enough to teleport away. His desire to spend any more time in the city had been soured by the nasty shock he’d had (he wasn’t going to call it a panic attack, he did _not_ get panic attacks, that wasn’t befitting of the Mandarin) and all he wanted to do was get away.

He was _not_ going to admit that it had taken him so long to teleport away because the first time he’d tried to put the rings back on, his hands had been shaking so much that he’d dropped them and had to scramble to make sure he’d found all five again. _That_ led to another nasty shock ( _not_ a panic attack) that ended in him sitting on the ground, back against the wall, trying like hell to keep breathing and keep from crying.

If Tony Stark had inexplicably shown up right then, Gene would have died from embarrassment.

After teleporting back to his room, he unmanifested the armor and strung the rings back on his necklace, more slowly, with far steadier hands. Once that was done and the rings were secured around his neck once again, he staggered to the bed and sat down, staring numbly at the floor.

Running was easy. He was _really_ good at running. That wasn’t a bad thing; escape wasn’t dishonorable but a way to continue fighting when the situation was more advantageous later. It was even a strength to be able to discern when would be an appropriate time to stand one’s ground and when to strategically retreat. He hadn’t _run away_ like some coward. He’d _escaped_. There was a difference.

Besides, going back and apologizing would be nigh suicidal. That moment of weakness in Peru where he thought he wanted to give it all up and go back had been just that - a moment. They wouldn’t listen to him now, especially not Tony. When he had all ten rings, he’d _make_ them listen if he had to. They’d understand then. Hell, they might even forgive him, given enough time.

He knew his reasons were good ones. And if they listened to him, maybe they’d think his reasons were good too.

He just wasn’t _ready_ for that yet.

 _It would be easier and smarter to go after the rings first,_ he had told himself. _Once I have the rings, everything else will fall into place._

He was beginning to suspect, in the back of his mind, that that wasn’t quite true.

But what else did he have? What else could he do? It was this or nothing; he’d spent his whole life chasing after that goal. Like hell he was going to stop just because of a sudden attack of conscience, or something as trivial as making friends.

His hand was tugging on the string around his neck, his thumb running over the bands of each ring, half-consciously counting them. _One two three four five. One two three four five._ Barely a month ago it seemed like that was all he needed. The goalposts had been moved on him. There were five rings left to go.

_One two three four five._

_Yī èr sān sì wǔ._

And he didn’t even have any friends to help him this time.

Zhang’s needling had gotten to him more than he cared to admit. There was no other reason he would have gone back time and time again, posturing with the rings he’d gained, only to be disrespected and belittled. Nothing he did was ever good enough. He was a fool for wanting to be proud of his achievements.

He hated Zhang. He’d gripped that steak knife tight, waiting in the shadows for Zhang to pass by, ready to kill him. The only thing that had stayed his hand, the only reason he’d reversed his grip on the knife and struck Zhang in the back of the head with the pommel instead of plunging the blade into his ribs, was that he needed the Tong not to suspect anything.

He’d found the second Makluan ring. He’d seen it on Howard Stark’s hand at a news conference two years ago and he’d been planning since then. Zhang could say what he wanted, but it had been _Gene_ who found that ring, it had been _Gene_ who planned to take it from Howard Stark, and it had been _Gene_ who had succeeded after sneaking his mother’s ring away from Zhang.

And there it had all fallen apart; Stark hadn’t had the ring with him on that plane, and when he returned and had thrown him in the dungeon, Zhang had caught on to the ring being missing and taken the opportunity to sucker-punch his unarmored stepson while he was coming up the stairs and take it back.

He’d ended up in the dungeons himself that night, bruised, bleeding, and hungry, but there was a bitter sort of triumph in the way he’d laid down upon the too-familiar stone. Zhang could be defeated. Zhang could be outwitted. The great menace of his life was just a man, not some eternally armored nemesis, and could fall like any other man.

The rush of power he’d felt when first slipping that ring onto his finger was unreal. That was his birthright, that ring _belonged_ to him, and he could swear that as the armor coalesced around him it was almost _welcoming_ his presence.

He’d felt invincible. And that was just with one ring. He’d felt like he could take on the world.

And without the armor he was just a kid. Just a kid who could be beaten and abused and locked in a basement cell just two doors away from where he’d locked his own prize. But nothing could take that feeling of invincibility away from him. That seed that had been planted long ago had finally, finally begun to sprout.

And this was the bitter fruit it bore. Five rings, and the power still wasn't enough, it wasn't what he'd been promised.

He ran his hands through his hair, breathing deeply, trying to keep himself together. He could do this. He hadn’t _needed_ any help anyway. It had been useful to have, but he could do it all on his own.

He was a Khan, after all. The rings all belonged to him; they just didn’t know it yet.

Gene was beginning to get his resolve back. Nearly running into Tony had been good for him, he decided. The reminder of what he’d lost by pursuing his destiny was also a reminder of what he could regain if he succeeded.

_He’ll understand when it’s over. He will._

He had to believe that was true.


	6. xxvi. name the mulberry and curse the locust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry everybody, I went to the grocery store.
> 
> On a serious note, thank you all so much for bearing with me. Life's been one hell of a ride, and regular updates will (hopefully) resume from now on.

> __He looked beneath his shirt today  
>  There was a wound in his flesh so deep and wide  
>  From the wound a lovely flower grew  
>  From somewhere deep inside  
>  He turned around to face his mother  
>  To show her the wound in his breast that burned like a brand  
>  But the sword that cut him open  
>  Was the sword in his mother's hand
> 
> \- Sting, "The Lazarus Heart"

 

**Inner Mongolia, PRC.  
Ten months after it all goes wrong.**

Sometimes - when he'd been running himself too hard and his subconscious let its guard down - he dreamed.

Thoughts he dared not think while awake would come rushing in, overwhelming the usual nightmares. And in their own way, the nightmares were preferable. At least with those when he awoke he was angry, not ashamed. He was still angry when he woke up from the other dreams, but angry at himself, not at the world. That self-directed anger was worse; it burned in like a wildfire, destroying all it touched, and it would put him in a black mood for days. Because no matter how many times he destroyed and rebuilt everything inside himself, no matter how many configurations of his thoughts he tried, it always came sneaking back in for the fire to burn out again.

And it was  _ exhausting _ .

(Sentiment is folly, folly he can ill afford. He was a hunted man now, and any display of weakness would be sufficient to trip him up and get him captured.

If it wouldn’t be so disastrous, he’d let it win.)

Sometimes, even more rarely, he dreamed true.

He is in his armor, standing alone at his former home, the gardens just the same as he remembers them. He looks down at his hands; instead of rings, nine tiny golden dragons clutch at his fingers, tails clasped firmly in their mouths, flaring their jewel-bright wings. He raises his head again and sees his mother, and while the Mandarin kneels before no man, he kneels before her.

"You have done well, Temujin," she says, and glory shines from her skin. He cannot bear to look upon her, and so averts his eyes. She has now been absent from his life for longer than she had been present, and he still acutely feels the pain of her loss. "Your time is soon at hand."

His helmet has disappeared, burned away by her radiance, by her regard. He is at once a young man of seventeen and a young boy of six. "I will not fail you, mother." He vows this now as he has a thousand times, as he does every time he counts the ring-dragons around his fingers like a prayer. "I swear it, I will not."

Her hand on his cheek burns his skin, and even here, even now, he keeps himself from breaking down and crying. The Mandarin does not weep like a babe for his mother. "See that you do not," she says, and the sudden chill in her voice stings like a whipcrack. He looks up at her, his eyes streaming (from the light, he tells himself, it's only from the light), and even through the cloak of grace about her he can see the dark bruises around her neck, reminders of the treachery that had slain her. He'd had a true dream about Zhang's intentions; a black snake and a red mongoose had been locked in combat, and the mongoose looked to be victorious, but then the black snake struck again and again and again until the mongoose fell nerveless from its coils. But before he could tell his mother, the snake had struck, the mongoose fell, and she was gone.

"I will not fail you," he says again, his voice cracking, and the light blinds him, and when he can see again she is gone. He gets to his feet, wiping away the gathered tears with the back of an armored hand.

"What is it that you truly want?" he hears her ask, and her voice comes from everywhere, from the earth, from the trees, from his very bones.

_ To bring you back, _ he tries to say, but his throat is stuck.  _ To sweep chaos from this world. To make sure no one has to endure again what I endured. To rule.  _

He turns, his helmet reappearing, and before him stands Tony Stark, hands jammed into his pockets, regarding the Mandarin with a vexed, curious expression. "What is it that you truly want?" he echoes, tilting his head slightly, as if to examine him.

The words want to tear themselves from his throat -  _ to bring her back, to sweep chaos from this world, to rule  _ \- but he finds himself frozen, struck dumb by the studious gaze of this boy.

Tony takes a step closer and grasps him by the shoulders, and the armor melts away in wisps of smoke, and he finds himself eye-to-eye with Stark, who is smiling. "What is it that you truly want?"

_ Friendship,  _ his heart shouts,  _ love and joy and trust and  _ friendship _ , people to confide in, an end to my exile. _ But his mouth can't seem to form the words. They are a betrayal of everything he's fought for his whole life, so he cannot say them, and he feels weaker for wanting to. As if sensing his weakness, the dragons around his fingers begin to hiss and bite at him, needle-sharp teeth piercing his skin, tiny claws digging into his flesh. He turns away from Tony and finds himself staring at Pepper Potts. Smiling, she takes one hand and Tony takes the other, and at their touch the dragons screech and burn and crumble into ash.

He cringes away from them, feeling suddenly panicked and unworthy, and the scene swirls around him. He can feel himself growing, changing, his clothes tearing as he transforms. He is a monstrous beast, all obsidian scales and golden claws, tall and strong and magnificent. Three knights charge him, while a fourth stands back, readying a javelin.

He is a dragon, and he is suddenly made aware of the fact that these knights have come to slay him; for what use is a dragon except to be slain?

He looks at the three armored figures charging at him. One is royalty and ice and justice, deadly to behold, with a sword of poison. One is steel and gunpowder and fire, a slow-burning rage bent on destroying him. The third knight, the one leading, is clad in blood and treasure, with a heart shining in him as bright and cold as winter ice, a star upon his chest.

He considers the three -  _ a monster, am I? Let's see how monstrous I can be  _ \- and rears back, preparing to spit a gout of flame at them.

The fourth, clad in armor as dark as his own with a pale gold face, flings the javelin at him, and it strikes true, piercing a wing. Shackles of iron bind him to the earth, and he roars in defiance, trying to free himself from the petty chains.

The leading knight bears no sword, only open hands, and he runs to the struggling dragon and places his armored hand flat upon the dragon's breast, over his heart. Instantly the transformation is reversed, and he is human again, unarmed, unarmored, and unclothed. He has nothing left. He  _ is _ nothing.

The knight's mask slides apart to reveal Tony's face, but this time there is no curiosity in his eyes, only cold fury. "You broke my heart,  _ Mandarin _ ," he says, spitting the title like a curse. "Now it's time for me to break yours."

He can hear the whine of a repulsor charging, and the cold golden mask clicks together over Tony's face.

Point-blank, he fires.

And Gene woke up with a cry, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding. He sat up in bed, checking himself for wounds. The dream felt realistic enough to leave them, but his fingers are unmarked, the skin on his chest and back unburnt and unbroken.

He knew the sensation of a true dream, though he hadn't had one for almost a year. And he knew that it would be foolish to ignore it.

Two of the warriors in his dream he could not name; one was Rhodes, surely, in that ugly grey armor. And the last, garbed in crimson and gold, a star in his chest - even without him opening his mask Gene could have puzzled out that it was Tony.  _ That _ much of it had been obvious enough.

The dream was a warning, he decided. If he showed weakness - any weakness - Tony Stark would find that chink in his armor and kill him.

The question from his dream still gnawed at him.  _ What is it that you truly want? _

It troubled him that he could not say.


End file.
